This invention relates to the prevention of addiction. More specifically, the invention relates to the administration of a compound to prevent addiction to analgesics often administered in pain management.
For many years, the treatment of postoperative pain and those conditions associated with chronic pain have been one of the most troubling and difficult areas of medicine. In general treatment has been so poor that laws have been enacted to ensure a patient's right to adequate pain management.
A major issue in pain management comes from the inability to quantify the adequacy of a pain control regimen. The clinical issues are complex, but it is clear that inadequate pain control leads to excessive morbidity and poor clinical outcomes.
It has long been known that exact pain control will improve the clinical outcome and be associated with little or no addiction liability. In a typical clinical situation, however, exact pain control is almost impossible to attain because pain generally fluctuates in intensity and rarely remains constant over time. On the other hand, treatment with opiates in excess of that required to control the pain often leads to chronic drug addiction and its unfortunate clinical and social consequences. See B. Meier and M. Petersen, “Medicine Merchants/Uses and Abuses: Use of Painkiller Grows Quickly. Along With Wide Spread Abuse,” New York Times, Mar. 5, 2001 at Al.
In general, physicians have chosen to under treat pain because of their legitimate concern that the risk of generating a person who will be addicted to opiates long after the medical condition requiring opiate treatment had resolved.
Thus, there is a need to be able to administer effective, but addictive, analgesics without the unwanted side affect of developing an addiction to such analgesics.